Claudio Monteverdi was nearly an exact contemporary of Shakespeare, but his lifespan stretched almost thirty years beyond the playwright’s death—so long that he led the sea change from the High Renaissance into a dramatically new musical era. Even in his final decades, Monteverdi remained a revolutionary composer who forever changed expectations about what music is capable of expressing.

This Friday at Nordstom Recital Hall, Pacific MusicWorks opens their new season with an opportunity to experience just what makes Monteverdi such a musical icon—not the long-dead pioneer of the music history textbooks, but an unbelievably imaginative poet of sounds who can still stir your soul to its core.